Skepticism

EVENTS

Friday Cephalopod: Cephalove

Now you can learn everything you need to know about octopus sex. It’s a bit tangly:

But just in case you got lost in all the tentacles, here’s a diagram to help you out. By the way, in case you’ve ever wondered where an octopus keeps its nads, they’re maybe not where you expected.

There should be a warning sign here, though.

In one instance, she and her colleagues observed two day octopuses mating on a reef in Indonesia. After about 15 minutes of copulation, the female lunged and wrapped two arms around the male’s bulbous body, his mantle. A few minutes later, the male was motionless. The female then carried the corpse to her den, where he presumably became dinner.

In another instance, researchers watched a large female day octopus off the coast of Micronesia. A small male mated with her a dozen times. But then the male went in for a 13th mating session, and the female turned on him. She strangled him and took him back to her den to feed on over the course of the next two days.